Christians, let us be humble; but let us remember, that he, who commands us to be humble, also commands us to call no man our master. Let us, according to our capacities, try by the scriptures what others teach as christian truth; and let us receive nothing, which we do not clearly see to accord with that unerring standard. Let not strong assertion pass with us for argument. By trusting implicitly to the judgment of others, we expose ourselves to inexpressible hazard. We shall probably fall into the worst hands. Men of true humility and of patient inquiry will tremble to take on themselves the responsible office of dictating to us the articles of our faith. The bold, self-sufficient, and domineering will offer themselves as our guides, and impose their erude and extravagant conceptions on our yielding credulity. It is to this timid dependence on the superior wisdom and sanctity of others, that we owe the extension and duration of some of those monstrous systems, which have horne the name of Christianity. The multitude were awed into submission; were taught to consider religion as something too awful and mysterious to be examined by their narrow faculties; were menaced with the flames and endless torments of hell, if they should dare to resist the authority of their guides; and in this prostration of understanding, they aequiesced in sentiments, which

common sense, could it have gained a hearing, would have rejected with instantaneous abhorrence and contempt.

I have extended my remarks on this head far beyond my original design. But I see at the present day so much of the false humility, which I have labored to expose, so much fear of man, so much submission of understanding to assertions and threats, that I cannot pass over this subject with indifference. I have witnessed extreme distress and alarm in very good people, because they have been unable to reconcile, with scripture or reason, certain doctrines, enforced upon them as essential to salvation by men, whose superior wisdom and sanctity they held it criminal to doubt. Great names are still employed to subdue and palsy the minds of christians. To the doubts of the sincere is opposed the authority of the holy and zealous of the present and past ages. A passive state of mind is thus induced. Those inquiries, which give vigor and activity to intellect, and which providence, by permitting diversity of opinion, designed to awaken, are put to rest. The traditions of the fathers are imposed on the children and the errors, which have been consecrated in an age of darkness, become the inheritance of many succeeding generations.

[The subject will be continued in the next number.]

[As the public attention has been called of late to Foreign Missions, we have thought, that an extract

from Tennant's Indian recreations, giving an account of a Moravian Mission in the south of Africa, might not be unacceptable and we offer it, as containing some useful reflections.]

"On the banks of Zonder-End river, near Bavian's Kloof,* in Southern Africa, three Moravian missionaries have gradually attracted to their society a number of the wandering and destitute Hottentots of that district. As their conduct has been successful, in every difficult and almost hopeless case, it forms a rule for the guidance of future missionaries, among the most savage of the Oriental tribes : they began by supplying their corporeal, before their intellectual wants.

"By gradually accustoming them to cleanliness and industry, they have succeeded in changing

the natural habits of the Hottentots so completely, that they have now not only a relish for dress, but are enabled to subsist and clothe themselves by the produce of their own labor. They are already acquainted with many of the duties, and aspire to the comforts of rational beings; an effect that probably never could have been produced by holding to them vague and temporary

* Bavian's Kloof, or pass, is seventy or eighty miles east from Cape Town, near the cape of Good Hope. It is situated inland on Zonder or FonderEnd river, a branch of Breed's river, which runs southeast into St. Sebastian or St. Catharine's Bay.

harangues on speculative tenets, before their minds were rendered capable of comprehending them, by a previous education.

"The comforts enjoyed by this little society, have, on various occasions, drawn to it such accessions from the destitute savages of that neighbourhood, as have greatly increased its original number. During the short period of the British government in that part of Africa, it had amounted to above six hundred souls; new proselytes were however so frequently added, that the missionaries had found it expedient to send to Europe for a farther supply of instructers.

"At the period when Mr. Barrow passed through this district, his attention was drawn to this society while assembled in the open field on Sunday, for the purpose of performing divine service. A scene so novel in this part of Africa, and so different from what he had been accustomed to observe among this unhappy class of beings, at once gratified his feelings, and excited a lively curiosity regarding the nature of an establishment which could produce such beneficial ef fects.

"The three missionaries, from whom we learnt the particulars of this society, belong to a sect of Moravians, termed Hernhuters, from the name of a vallage in Saxony, which had afforded them an asylum, when driven from Moravia. "They were plain and decent in their dress," adds this traveller, "of modest manners, and intelligent in conversa

tion." Although zealous in the cause of their mission, they were free from bigotry and enthusi

asm.

character:

"Around the different dwellings of these missionaries, and those of their flock also, every thing participated of that neatness and simplicity, which forms the strongest feature in their the church which they had built was a plain and neat edifice their mill for grinding corn was superior to any.in the whole colony: their gardens were also kept in good order, and produced abundance of vegetables for the supply of the table: almost every thing that had been done, was by the labor of their own hands; for, agreeably to the rules of the society of which they were members, each missionary had learned some useful profession. One was skilled in every branch of smith's work, the second was a school master, and the third a tailor.

"The six hundred proselytes, who had joined these teachers, were cantoned in a valley adjoining the river, and in huts, with a small portion of ground annexed to each, for the purpose of raising sustenance. The various stages of their improvement were still visible, and marked with exactness the length of time they had joined this community: the earliest converts were best clothed, cleanest, and most perfectly accommodated; a eircumstance which afforded a pleasing demonstration that their improvement was gradual, and that the amelioration of their state was progressive, arising from a change both in their man

ners and industry. The condition of the greater part had already become preferable to that of the poor in some parts of England.

"The circumstance, which seems chiefly to have enabled these missionaries to overcome the indolence and filthy habits that distinguish the savage life, is, their first endeavouring to accustom the Hottentots to bodily labor and cleanliness, before proposing to their minds any abstract doctrines or theological tenets.

"A method, the very reverse of this, has frustrated the labors of by far the greater part of European missionaries, in almost every part of Asia: in the case now under review, every individual Hottentot, who chose to learn a trade, was immediately paid for his labor, as soon as he could earn wages. Some, in consequence of this, hired themselves for a limited time to the neighbouring peasants; some made mats and brooms for sale; others reared poultry; and not a few supported themselves and their families by their cattle and sheep. The greater part of the society was, by these means, enabled to purchase decent clothing; and to appear at church dressed in printed cottons, instead of the filthy habiliments which had invariably distinguished that tribe in their natural state, and which had conferred upon them a sort of preeminence in wretchedness and loathsome barbarity.

"These various improvements, thus effected among this tribe of Hottentots, are not to be considered as precarious or transient in

their nature ;- for since they are gradual, and have proceeded upon rational principles, as well as a thorough conviction among the natives themselves of their utility, they have continued, and must continue in a state of gradual advancement. Every individual being at last fully persuaded that cleanliness is greatly conducive to his health and his comfort, he is willing to bestow any little money he can spare in purchasing clothes, instead of spirits and tobacco, which in his unreclaimed state, constituted the supreme objects of his desire, although they had occasioned the greater part of those evils and mischiefs which had embittered his condition.

"Such have been the effects of the judicious arrangements and instructions of the missionaries at Bavian's Kloof. That enthusiasm and fanatical spirit, which has so often characterised the Moravian sectaries in Europe, having found no place in this society, their discourses are there short, and replete with good sense and useful advice; and so far are they from making any ostentatious display of a large list of new converts to their persuasion, that they have ever been remarkably cautious in conferring either the name or privileges of their new profession upon any of the proselytes at an unseasonable period.

"Not more than sixty, of ten times that number of converts, had, at the period alluded to, been admitted members of the christian church, by the initiatory rite of baptism. Their conduct, in this respect, has also been as differ

ent from that of other missiona. ries in the East, as the conse, quences which have been the result of it. In that country it has been too common to publish at the different stations, and to transmit to Europe a pompous catalogue of converts to the christian church, not without strong suspicion of its magnitude being increased by the artifices of these converts themselves; the same persons presenting themselves at different places under feigned

names.

"This successful example of the Maravians in Africa, which has thus been given in detail, on the authority of Mr. Barrow, is, in every particular, consistent with the personal knowledge of several English gentlemen, who were then upon the spot: But to such as are in any degree.acquainted with the character of that writer, no additional testimony will be necessary to authenticate any fact, recorded in his volumes.

"As many important inferences are to be drawn from this conduct of the Moravians of Ba vian's Kloof, they ought not to rest on a solitary example; the same lesson may be drawn from a thousand instances, as will appear in the sequel.

"1. We have to infer from it, first, as a rule for the guidance of future missionaries, that they ought to learn the more useful of the mechanical trades. The primary lesson, which savage man seems capable of receiving, is to labor with his hands; this nature seems to have ordained, as an early provision against cold, hunger, and other urgent wants.

Even in the communicating of this instruction, the missionary must meet with many disappointments, and he ought to possess, along with mechanical skill, great patience, and much practical acquaintance with human character.

2. As the individuals of foreign and independent tribes are free, and cannot be compelled to attend the instructions of their teachers, they can only be attached to them by motives of interest: every new lesson ought to be productive of some benefit: it ought either to convey a positive comfort, or remove some want. Hence the missionaries of rude and unreclaimed nations must be men of active and unwearied benevolence; they ought not, as heretofore, to be drawn from the haunts of the solitary and reeluse; where the mind is too of ten soured by the acrimony of polemical doctrines, and where the students are generally unqualified by any acquaintance with those mechanical labors which must supply the primary wants of man.

"3. The missionaries must beware of magnifying the extent and importance of their own labors, by giving premature admission to their new converts into the rank and privileges of christianity. By a contrary method the natives will be too apt to disgrace its doctrines by the grossness of their conceptions, and will perhaps still oftener offend the purity of its precepts, by the immorality and extravagance of their conduct.

4. The missionaries ought assiduously to apply to the in

struction of the young; not merely in the elements of learning, as signifying the knowledge of letters, but in communicating habits of domestic industry and useful labor. For these purposes a course of discipline will be found more effectual than oral instruction.

"Fifthly, the missionary must 'shew his faith by his works.' His conduct must at all times prove an ornament, not a disgrace to his profession; for of all the human causes of the speedy diffusion of Christianity among the heathen nations, this has justly been regarded as the most powerful, namely, the upright and blameless life of its early professors.

"Should these rules of evangelizing rude nations be observed, and this mode of instruction, it will be attended with equally good effect among every savage people.

"For if the same happy fruits have not been reaped from missionary labors in India and among the other Oriental nations, it must be attributed to the neglect of these necessary means: it cannot assuredly be ascribed to any greater indocility in the natives, or to any superior difficulty of communicating instruction to the peaceable Hindoos. Notwithstanding the boasted permanency of their system, the great reformer, Nanuk, has connverted the whole nation of the Seeks to a different faith.

"Our failure so often in these countries must have arisen from the adoption of a less judicious mode of instruction, from the promulgation of mysterious doctrines, previous to the communi